LCD stereolithography 3D Printing at CES

The Uniz 3D Slash

The Uniz 3D Slash

It always amazed me when I was younger that Hollywood seemed to make two of the exact same movie at the same time; there was Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante's Peak, Antz and Bugs Life I just never really understood how this happened. It appears the same thing happens with the 3D printing industry, certainly at the desktop level it started with Fab@home and RepRap appearing at the same time and now we have two companies launching desktop resin-based 3D printers that use LCD technology as opposed to Lasers or DLP.

Photocentric, have just finished filming with Laura showing off its Liquid Crystal range of 3D Printers (video coming shortly) and I have just finished a conversation with CEO of Uniz 3D, a San Diego headquartered company who have manufactured the Slash 3D Printer.

The Slash machine looks very sleek, as does the Prod-to-Print app the machine uses as a printer interface. Dr Houmin Li, CEO of Uniz 3D explained more:

"This is the Slash, it is not released yet it will be on kickstarter next month, it is an SLA technology using light to solidify resins, but it is a different technology than lasers or DLP, we use LCD screens and contact exposure. It is actually faster than DLP and up to 50x faster than similar laser-based machines."

Uniz 3D Parts

Uniz 3D Parts

If those claims are true, and everything running on the stand seems to suggest that it is, this technology could be the next trend in 3D printing. Uniz 3D have gone to great lengths to ensure that the process is as easy as possible with the app and importantly the automatic resin level control which ensure you don't run out of resin mid print.

The machine has been in development for over a year and I can confirm that all of the machines on the stand were actually printing. At a price point of sub $2,000 for high resolutions parts, printed quickly this seems something of a bargain. It did appear to me that the cartridge system for the material was proprietary though this and the Kickstarter pricing was something the CEO declined to answer.